


there is a light that never goes out

by Khaleeki



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Heavy Angst, Major character death - Freeform, Post-Death Fic, Read at Your Own Risk, im honestly sorry, really sad fluff, this made me cry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-28
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2019-03-10 15:58:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13504869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khaleeki/pseuds/Khaleeki
Summary: Selina doesn’t look very surprised. “I’ll stay.” She says softly, and sits back down beside him. “I won’t leave you.”Bruce smiles in spite of himself. “Oh Selina. We both know that’s not true.” It’s the first coherent thing he’s said all evening.





	there is a light that never goes out

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song by The Smiths!

He slams a twenty down on the counter, his eyebrows furrowed and fingers tapping impatiently. His stare burns a hole in the barista’s head, and she gulps nervously and scurries off.

She returns two minutes later with a cup of coffee. He grabs it with a simple nod. He sweeps out of the door, slamming the door so hard behind him that the small bell falls off the door onto the ground.

_“Bruce…”_

No one crosses his path. Who would get in the way of an angry tall powerful billionaire?

Bruce’s pace is quick, efficient, and purposeful. He can feel the people moving aside as we walks by.

_“I need to tell you something-”_

The woman beside him chuckles to himself.

“What?” he snaps.

“Never hurts to be nice to someone, Bruce,” Selina says, grinning lazily and effortlessly keeping pace with him.

Bruce’s lips quirk into an almost smile in spite of himself, but scowls immediately when he sees Selina’s eyes crinkle in effort of not laughing.

“Doesn’t pay to make fun of people, Selina,” Bruce says in a mock patronizing voice.

Selina softens at once. “You know I’d never make fun of you.”

Bruce can feel a lump in his throat. “I know.”

*

He sits on his chair staring blankly at the bat computer, typing furiously. The sound of the bats flying around the cave and the soft lull of the waterfall fill the room, they comfort him somehow.

“All I’m saying,” Clark says in a soft voice, “Is that you know you can talk to me.”

“I know that Clark,” Bruce says impatiently, “You don’t need to be so condescending.”

He raised her eyebrows. Usually this would have an effect on people, making them feel uneasy, but Bruce didn’t flinch.

_“There were too many of them.”_

“He’s only trying to help,” Alfred offers from the corner he’s standing in, his hands tightly clasped behind his back. Bruce barely spares a glance at him before returning to his silent stand off with him.

“I don’t need his help,” he says abruptly. Clark looked hurt but he had expected that, he crossed his arms in front of him the way he knew he did when he was angry.

“He doesn’t mean it,” Alfred tells him.

_“Bruce…”_

Clark doesn’t acknowledge him. He gets up, as if he were expecting this to happen, his footsteps resonated around the cave. Bruce only feels a twinge of regret. He had been working non-stop for weeks, never stopping to take a break and think too much. He barely slept. His knuckles barely healed. Blackgate and Arkham were full. His heart was empty.

“You’re pushing a lot of people away,” Alfred comments.

“What else is new,” Bruce mutters in response.

*

Bruce knocks back another whiskey, already feeling the fuzz of drunkenness close around his mind. He had never been a drinker, for some reason it started to make him feel better. It helped him to forget. He had been living on auto-pilot, going to meeting at Wayne Enterprises and fighting criminals at night. Ignoring the elephant in the room.

He slides the glass back to the bar man. “Another one,” he slurs.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you drink this much,” Selina comments from the stool next to him.

_“Bruce…”_

“Go away.” Bruce says, stumbling over his words

“So rude,” Selina smirks. “I’ll leave if you want me to.”

She starts to get up to leave, and panic seizes Bruce like a bucket of ice being poured over him. “No!”

_“I need to tell you something-”_

The bar man glances up, startled, but sees Bruce and decides he’s just another poor drunkard. It’s funny — Bruce never thought he’d become one of them.

Selina doesn’t look very surprised. “I’ll stay.” She says softly, and sits back down beside him. “I won’t leave you.”

Bruce smiles in spite of himself. “Oh Selina. We both know that’s not true.” It’s the first coherent thing he’s said all evening.

*

He wakes up with a warm body next to him, but it’s not his house, it’s not his sheets.

He rolls over to see the woman with a soft mane of dark hair lying beside him, asleep. Her hair is sprawled on the pillow, making it look like a mantle.

_“I need to tell you something-”_

It feels like a different day, where everything was okay. When she was safe. It almost feels normal, it almost feels like everything is okay.

Nothing is okay.

He rolls back over to gaze and the wall, and Selina’s standing there by the window, watching him with a half smile.

_“I love you.”_

He sits up halfway, opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again, and croaks, “I’m sorry.”

Selina shakes her head and smiles, “You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

Bruce settles back into the pillows, and closes his eyes, so that even for a brief moment, he can pretend everything’s alright. “But I do,” he whispers, guilt choking his words. It was his fault. It's always his fault.<

It's always because of him. 

*  
It happens many more nights. He goes out, gets drunk, and sleeps with someone. It doesn’t matter who they are, they’re all nameless to him anyway. Bruce doesn’t realise that they all share something in common. He always looks for green eyes, they’re very hard to find. Their hair is black as the midnight sky, but he doesn’t take time to notice.

_“Bruce…”_

Selina is always there. She’s standing over him, she’s laying his head on Bruce’s pillow and just breathing with him, she’s sitting in the corner when the morning arrives. Her hands trace his chest and they run through his hair but he doesn’t really feel it, so he lets himself sink in her presence.

_“I love you.”_

She’s making the guilt rise in Bruce’s stomach without giving him a disappointed look, she’s making Bruce wince with her blunt honesty, which is a trait he loves about her, she’s gently reminding Bruce that he needs to move on.

Bruce doesn’t.

*

Someone must have contacted Clark and Dick about Bruce’s poor mental state, because they show up at the manor. Bruce feels woozy from one too many drinks, so he slumps onto the sofa.

They sit in silence for a few minutes before Dick’s patience wears thin. “You’ve got to stop living like this Bruce,” he says in a flat, toneless voice.

Bruce knows perfectly well what Dick is talking about, but he decides to play the clueless card. “Live like what?” he said harsher than it was meant to be.

Unfortunately, Clark has always known how to read him, so he glares at him and stands up, his hands shaking. “Like this,” he says, his voice trembling with emotion, gesturing to the empty takeout containers, the upturned furniture, the bottles of alcohol littered around the place.

Bruce shifts so he’s looking at the ceiling. “I don’t see anything wrong with it.”

“Bruce. Fuck, Please,” the desperation in his son’s voice makes him ache, but he won’t give in. “When you’re not working yourself to death you’re drinking yourself to death. You don’t want to talk to anyone or see anyone. For God’s sake, you almost killed that man the other day- ”

“He was a terrorist.”

“You’re doing the same thing you did when Jason died. Shutting everyone out, drowning in sorrow. Drowning in violence,” Dick’s voice sounds weak and tired.

He closes his eyes.

He can hear Clark give a shaking sigh, and walk over to help Bruce up. “Where are you taking me,” Bruce grumbles as Clark lifts an arm up, and Dick lifts the other. 

“To your bedroom,” Dick replies in a sort of exhausted voice.

Bruce snatched his arm out of both of their grips and rolls back onto the sofa. “I can walk by myself and I’d rather sleep here tonight.”

“Why?”

“Because I feel like it.”

“No need to be so impetulant towards your own son Bruce,” Selina comments mildly while flipping his newspaper pages. Bruce makes a half groaning, half sighing noise and tells them he’d just prefer to sleep out here tonight.

Dick slams the door on the way out.

It’s a total lie - Bruce hasn’t slept there since before that night. He can still feel the rain and blood soaking his hands as –

“They’re your sons Bruce. You need to give them support.”

Bruce rolled so that he could face Selina’s steady green eyes. “They’re your sons too,” was the first thing he thought of to say, but Selina shakes her head and puts the newspaper down.

“Babe - you know none of this is real.”

“Isn’t it?” Bruce says idly. “I was so sure.”

Selina gives him that look again that makes Bruce feel transparent, and he opens his mouth and words start pouring out.

“You want me to admit that this is all in my head? That you’re just a part of my imagination? That I’ve been pushing everyone away selfishly? Even my own kids? That I’m living in a hovel? That my mental health is deteriorating? That you’re -”

Bruce stops, unable to say what he was about to have said. He hadn’t realised that he’d stood up, his whole body shaking. He turns back to look at Selina, but there’s no one there.

He crumples into a heap on the floor, heaving breaths but somehow being able to take the oxygen in.

He doesn’t know how long he stays there.

*

_“Bruce…”_

_“Please, baby, hold on, please, I’m trying but it’s not working-”_

The one-night stands are becoming more frequent, and Selina isn’t there to hold Bruce back, so he kisses random people with traits in common with Selina, he sometimes sleeps with them, but it’s not enough. Never enough. He is betraying her, he is trying to drown her out of his mind and it makes him feel even worse. He feels guilty, alone, lost, afraid. He wants to rip his heart out of his chest.

No one comes by to visit him, the Manor feels like hell. Bruce works a lot, at the company or in the batcave. He never stops, and if he isn’t working he’s drinking. Maybe Dick was right.

He sees Selina in flashes of his peripheral vision.

_“Why isn’t it working, Clark, help me- ”_

The bar man comes to know his name, he knows his order by now but stops Bruce from drinking too many. Bruce doesn’t care, but without the bar man he’d probably get some form of alcohol poisoning.

_“I need to tell you something-”_

_“No, you’re going to get out of here fine, everything’s going to be fine-”_

_“Bruce…”_

He never laughs anymore. He never smiles. It’s not like he did before but now he’s sure he’ll never be able to so again.

_“I love you.”_

_“I- Selina- Please-”_

The door cracks open in his apartment and Bruce winces from the light. He doesn’t bother to sit up, knowing that whoever it is will announce themselves.

_“Bruce.”_

Ah.

He winces again, but internally this time.

“Jason,” his voice is so rough it was hard to speak at all.

He feels a dip in the couch beside him. He frowns. When had he closed his eyes?

Jason sighs, running his fingers through his hair. 

“Do you know the last thing Selina said to me before she died?”

His heart almost stops.

Bruce pushes off the bed and gets to his feet backing away from Jason. “Selina,” he says, his voice shaking. To say her name hurts, to think about her hurts. To dream about her hurts.

“Bruce-” Jason sighs.

“No,” he whispers. “Leave me alone.”

“I know, it’s only been a couple of months but…” A couple of months? It felt like years. It felt like an eternity

He stands and begins to walk over to him slowly. “You need to accept it. Running won’t do you any good.”

“Stop,” Bruce murmurs, his fingers digging into his palm.

“Selina’s-”

“Please stop.”

Jason is inches away from him now, he’s backed up against the wall, panting. He’s gripping something in his hand, a piece of paper.

“She-” his voice cracked, “she gave this to me, before she died,” he continued, even though Bruce flinches. “I guess she had been carrying it around for a while. I don’t know why she gave it to me out of all people but I think I should give it to you.”

He drops the paper into his hand, and Bruce closes his eyes for a minutes, taking shallow breaths.

He unfurls the crumpled slip of paper, taking an immeasurable amount of time. It’s open, and Bruce can see Selina’s scrawled handwriting.

_Don’t let him be alone _.__

____

Bruce hadn’t cried when Selina had died. He hadn’t cried at the funeral. He hadn’t cried all these months, wasting away while imagining Selina was alive and right beside him, but he cried now.

____

He slid down the wall; paper clutched to his chest, and broke down.

____

Bruce heaved out choking sobs, howls that left him unable to move, and curled himself onto the ground. The memories of her filled his head. Her smile, her eyes, her scent. Her figure running and jumping across Gotham’s rooftops. Her lips against his. The feeling of her claws as they scratched his skin. Her soft hand on his. Her angry stare. Her loving stare. Her purple suit. Her hands cupping his cheeks, kissing his face. Soft touches and rough touches and hatred and love. Most of all love. So much of it. 

He realizes that she deserves to be remembered.

____

He felt the tears down his cheeks. It reminded him of when he lost his parents and when he lost Jason and when he lost Tim. He had lost too much. He was always losing.

____

In what world did he ever think he could be happy? In what moment did he think that the world would allow him one second of happiness? How had he been so foolish? How had he ever thought he could let himself love someone without them dying?

____

He wept for the weeks of hollow aches in his chest, he wept for his sons, who were probably feeling what he’s feeling, but Bruce was too selfish to give them comfort. He lay there and cried for what seemed like hours, not even violent sobbing, but the type of crying that left you unable to move. He vaguely recalls someone taking him into his bedroom, where he hasn’t been since the night Selina died.

____

He curls into the sheets, breathing in the scent Selina left behind, and eventually passes out from exhaustion. 

____

_“ Selina! ”_

____

_Bruce’s cry echoes through the street, and he nearly trips over the road several times before dropping down to Selina, lying on the street, bleeding out._

____

__

____

_“There were too many of them,” Selina groaned, her eyelids drooping. Bruce frantically searched for the wound, but there were so many it was hard to tell which one was the main one. He felt the blood pool around him. Bruce’s breath started to come erratically, but even more so when he saw that Selina had closed his eyes._

____

__

____

_He shook Selina, causing his eyelids to flutter open again. “Stay with me,” Bruce ordered. “We’ve done this a million times.” He started to try and cover her wounds but the blood just seeped out. There were just too many. He didn't know what to do. ___

______ _ _

__

______ _ _

_It wasn’t working, why wasn’t it working?_

______ _ _

__

______ _ _

_“Bruce…”_

______ _ _

__

______ _ _

_“Please, baby, hold on, please, I’m trying but it’s not working- ” Bruce said, with a lump in his throat._

______ _ _

__

______ _ _

_“Bruce-” her voice sounded so weak, so empty. He couldn't do it._

______ _ _

__

______ _ _

_“Why isn’t it working, Clark, help me -” Bruce yelled for Clark, he was supposed to be there, why wasn’t he there-_

______ _ _

__

______ _ _

_“I - I need to tell you something-”_

______ _ _

__

______ _ _

_“No, you’re going to get out of here fine, everything’s going to be fine-” Bruce reassured himself. He felt the panic rising at the back of his throat. He felt dread seep his bones. He felt the fear deep in his chest._

______ _ _

__

______ _ _

_“I love you.” Selina croaked out, raising one hand with tremendous effort to touch her husband’s cheek._

______ _ _

__

______ _ _

_Bruce leaned into it unconsciously, she was so small and soft and perfect. He always forgot how small she actually was. She alwayas radiated so much strength. His hands were still trying to work, trying to call someone but it wasn’t working, why wasn’t it working? He tried to cover the wounds, to stop the heavy blood loss and he couldn't. He couldn't._

______ _ _

__

______ _ _

_“I love you,” Selina repeats, fainter this time, but she smiles, and it’s the same smile Bruce fell for, the same smile that simultaneously broke and made his heart every time it was directed at him. Please stay alive. Stay alive for me._

______ _ _

__

______ _ _

_“I- Selina- Please-” Bruce gasps out. “Not you, please, not you.” He wanted to say more, so much more._

______ _ _

__

______ _ _

_“Don’t leave me. Selina, please. Not you.”_

______ _ _

__

______ _ _

_Her smile reached her eyes, and her hand fell and there was no pulse, and Bruce was so stunned, he couldn’t breathe and he coudn’t think and he was clutching Selina’s body. But he knew there was no life left, no Selina, nothing. This can't be happening. This can't be happening._

______ _ _

__

______ _ _

_He could hear someone running towards him, he could hear their voices. But he couldn’t think, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t speak. He remembered someone screaming and someone is there weeping, and the boys are there, clutching at each other, and Bruce can’t remember anything else –_

______ _ _

*

______ _ _

“Bruce catch me! Catch me!” Tim squeals as he jumps off from the couch. Bruce grabs him and lifts him up making him squeal softly. The sunlight has put a golden hue on everything, making Selina’s eyes shine and the boys golden in the light.

______ _ _

Selina holds Jason as he lays on the couch, tickling as he shrieks and giggles. He had never heard Jason laugh so much. Selina is chuckling as well, their laughter is mixed together and it fills the room making it even brighter than before. Dick is jumping around them, asking to join the game and he tickles Jason as well and they all collapse into a heap together. Ace is running around them, barking and jumping.

______ _ _

Tim rejoices in his arms and Bruce grins so hard it hurts. He didn’t know Alfred had taken a picture.

______ _ _

The picture is pinned to the right wall of his bedroom. The only one.

______ _ _

Bruce stares at that one for a while.

______ _ _


End file.
